


After School Lesson

by raes_ramblings



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Angst, F/M, Injury, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raes_ramblings/pseuds/raes_ramblings
Summary: “Being optimistic is the only thing I’m good at.” - Makoto Naegi-Thousands of horrific incidents happened everyday. People got attacked, things got stolen, accidents happened. It was just a fact of life. Yet somehow, even after hearing news reports of heinous crimes everyday of your almost eighteen years of life, you’re still never prepared for anything horrific to happen to you.Then again, this kind of thing was recognizably unprecedented. In all of those newscasts you’d heard, both actively and passively, you’d never heard about anything like this. How could you have possibly prepared to be thrown into the midst of a Killing Game?
Relationships: Naegi Makoto/Reader
Kudos: 21





	After School Lesson

Thousands of horrific incidents happened everyday. People got attacked, things got stolen, accidents happened. It was just a fact of life. Yet somehow, even after hearing news reports of heinous crimes everyday of your almost eighteen years of life, you’re still never prepared for anything horrific to happen to _you_.

Then again, this kind of thing was recognizably unprecedented. In all of those newscasts you’d heard, both actively and passively, you’d never heard about anything like this. How could you have possibly prepared to be thrown into the midst of a _Killing Game_? 

Though it was hard to keep track of the days while being secluded away, you were certain you’d been trapped in Hope’s Peak Academy for at least a month. There had been over 730 hours to process this, but it still didn’t feel real. Maybe on some level you were subconsciously clinging onto a false shred of hope that this was just a night terror, or maybe your mind just wasn’t willing to admit that things really were this dire. Regardless of the reasoning, you’d spent your days here in an unlikely mix of dread and apathy. You were both hyper-aware and numb. 

And somehow, even in moments of heightened tension like this one, you found yourself spacing out and losing small chunks of time. You hadn’t even noticed you’d zoned out at first, and you certainly hadn’t intended to, but you realized you’d missed the last minute or so of the Class Trial. In circumstances like this, not catching a minute’s worth of conversation could have been a deadly mistake.

“Without my room key, I couldn’t have possibly put the locker key in there myself.”

Kirigiri was still debating Byakuya’s claim that she must’ve killed Mukuro, as the key to the locker holding the believed murder weapon was found in her room. Thankfully, that meant you couldn’t have missed anything too revolutionary. You took this to be reassuring and allowed your gaze to deviate from the two arguing over to the brown haired boy standing at the podium beside yours. The trial was in full swing and Makoto looked as pensive as everyone in the room did, but he still remembered to keep a tight, reassuring grip on your hand as you stood in the space next to his. While preoccupied with pinning the culprit, there was still a part of his mind focused on comforting you. 

“Does no one have any objections? Do you accept what Kirigiri is saying?” 

After receiving only silence , Byakuya sighed. “I see. We have no choice but to accept it. It wasn’t Kirigiri who put the locker key in her room, but someone else.”

“But.. who is ‘someone else’? Toges, you had Kiri’s key, right?” Hiro questioned. 

“Yes, but I have an alibi. After 10 p.m., I was with you all. It’s not possible for me to have murdered Mukuro Ikusaba or to have put the key in Kirigiri’s room.”

“Then who did put the key in Kiri’s room?”  
  
Byakuya was quick to answer Hiro again. “There’s only one reasonable possibility- He had the key with him and pretended as though he found it in Kirigiri’s room.”  
  
“You’re talking about… Naegi?” Aoi’s voice cracked a bit as she spoke, a look not unlike betrayal clouding over her soft features. 

“That’s the only explanation.”

“That’s not possible,” You spoke up without a second thought, though your voice was weaker than you had intended, “While we were investigating in the bio lab, Makoto gave me his jacket, and there definitely wasn’t anything in his pockets then. We went straight to the garden so he could meet with Byakuya after that, so he couldn’t have stopped to get it. If it wasn’t in his jacket, where else would he have been able to hide that bulky key without you noticing he had it?”

“Hm, I suppose that is a fair point. It would have been rather difficult to conceal it just beneath his shirt..” Byakuya looked away again in thought, seemingly satisfied with your reasoning.

“He actually took off his jacket? I didn’t think he ever took that thing off…”

“Oh yeah, he totally did! (Name) was still wearing it when they came into the garden! She even had her hands in the pockets,” Aoi confirmed to Yasuhiro, her voice brighter now that her friend didn’t seem like the culprit. 

“You had his jacket, (name)?” Kyouko raised her hand to her chin in thought, “It’s true that Makoto clearly didn’t have the key in his pocket when he gave her his jacket, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in his pocket when he got it back.”

_“Huh?”_

Other than Makoto, Kirigiri was the student you trusted the most. You’d covered for her multiple times, and followed her command even when you didn’t understand her motives or reasoning. You had offered to let her stay in your room with you last night when Byakuya confiscated her key. In a normal high school scenario, you wouldn’t have hesitated to call her one of your best friends. 

She couldn’t possibly be implying what you thought… _right_? 

“If the key wasn’t in his pocket this morning and he never stopped back at his dorm, he couldn’t have had it when the murder took place. Yet somehow it was in his pocket by the time he needed to plant it in my room,” she spoke with an almost chilling certainty. “There was only one person who would have had the opportunity to pass the key off to him in time.”

She sounded calm, not at all like someone accusing their friend of murder. 

“Hold on-” Makoto raised his hands defensively, unintentionally tugging the one in your grasp away rather harshly. He wasn’t happy when he was under suspicion, but now she was accusing you? 

But Kyouko didn’t yield. 

“Makoto was the only person who could have placed the key in my room, but there’s only one person who could have had it when Mukuro was killed. There’s also only one person that Makoto would be willing to cover for- his girlfriend.”

“What?!” you practically spit out your response. 

“H-hold on a second! That’s not what happened!” Makoto was reeling. “Let’s think things through again! There’s something at work behind the scenes here- there has to be! This whole class trial doesn’t make any sense, don’t you guys agree?! Mukuro Ikusaba, who we’d never seen before, suddenly shows up dead… and there’s a class trial for it?! A- and Kirigiri was saying, too, that this is all a trap set by the Puppetmaster! So it’s gotta be-” 

Monokuma’s shrill voice cut off Makoto’s desperate rambling. “Okay! Time’s up!”

“What?”

“Time’s uuuup! The Class Trial is oooover! So there’s no need to talk about anything else!” 

“W- what the hell? We’re out of time?” Makoto replied first, your reaction trailing quickly after. 

“Hold on, what do you mean? That’s not fair!”

“We’ve never had a time limit!” Suddenly even Kyouko looked panicked, her restraint and conviction having vanished as the trail was definitively ended. There was no going back. 

“All thanks to your tardiness, Kirigiri! ‘Cause of you, we were tight on time! With that said, you guys, it’s Ballot Time! Please cast your ballot using the switch in front of you!”

Makoto’s green eyes met yours as you both turned towards each other at the same time. The look of pure trepidation and disbelief etched onto his features must’ve mirrored yours perfectly. 

“Ballot… time?”

-

“I’m… the culprit?” your voice was soft, almost too quiet for even your boyfriend beside you to hear it. 

“N-no, that’s not right, guys-” Makoto was immediately shaking his head in shock and confusion, his hand reaching out for yours again desperately as he tried to make a last minute plea for them to believe him. Your words cut him off though, the panic fully setting in. 

“That’s not right! I didn’t do it! Th- this doesn’t make any sense!” 

“It’s time for another super exciting, heart-pounding punishment!!”

Your gaze directly snapped to Kirigiri, who looked even paler than usual- as if the weight of what her lies had caused was setting in. You’d had her back this entire time, and she blamed you. She _framed_ you. “W- why me?”

“I have no illusions for earning your forgiveness, because all of this is my fault..” her response was simple and to the point, just like her answers always were. She was acting like she usually did, except that she’d just betrayed you in the most brutal way possible. 

“Kirigiri, tell them-” Makoto made his own frantic appeal for her to clear this up, to do anything to stop them from ripping you away from him. He moved urgently, throwing his arms around you and clutching you to his chest. They couldn’t just execute you when you weren’t the actual culprit, right? This wasn’t how this game was supposed to be played. 

Yet Monokuma insisted, and you were forcefully dragged away from your boyfriend’s secure embrace. 

“Let’s get the ball rollin’! It’s punishment time!”

 **You have been found guilty. Time for the punishment!**

The sharp fibers of the ropes around your legs and wrists dug into your skin, dispelling any chance you had at convincing yourself that this was just some bad dream. You could feel the frayed rope stabbing your skin, the sputtering of the conveyor belt below your desk, the shake that spread through the room with every 

_Thud_

_thud_

_thud_

Of the giant machine pounding into the ground behind you. 

Almost against your own will, you were flailing against the chair, screaming and sobbing, begging for help. No one could help you, no matter how hard you screamed, and flailing only made the sharp rope cut into your skin more than it already was. 

This wasn’t how this was supposed to end. You’d promised Makoto that the two of you would take down the Mastermind and get out of here together, yet somehow, you’d ended up in the execution chair. _For a crime you didn’t commit_. This was it, this was how you went. You had lost and there was nothing you could do about it. 

You were going to be blackened, and you had to accept it.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you tried to calm yourself, though your chest still shook with sobs. 

You thought of Makoto. You thought of how he’d been so reassuring and supportive during your time here. How he’d pull you into his side when you got too overwhelmed, or hold your hand when you investigated together. How warm he felt when he’d squeeze you into a tight hug, or how nice his jacket smelled when he let you wear it. How he could never tie his uniform tie correctly. How he had looked at you with pure love in his eyes that day while lying together under a sakura tree outside of the school, with the warm sun filtering through the petals onto your skin… _when had that happened?_

But a sudden new sound startled you and you opened your eyes without thinking. The heavy foot of the machine had frozen, and was now giving off a grating buzzing noise as if it was trying with all its power to still move, to still _crush_. 

You almost missed it in your surprise, but out of the corner of your eye you caught a familiar face flash onto the screen in front of you. _Alter Ego?_

Then you were falling. The foot had stopped, but the conveyor belt had kept going and the desk rolled off of it, sending you flying backwards into the dark. 

Your eyes opened slowly, fogginess swelling in your mind as you tried to remember what happened and where you were. Unfortunately, it only took a few moments for the violent memories of the trial and execution to come flooding back to you. The crushing block had halted, but then you fell backwards, still tied tight to the old wooden desk. Splintered bits of that desk lied around you, seemingly having shattered on impact. That same impact must’ve knocked you unconscious, but you were most definitely alive. Alter Ego had stopped the execution. 

You weren’t sure where you had ended up at first; it wasn’t a part of the school you’d seen before. Considering the rancid smell and large piles of garbage, there was really only one place it could be- the bottom of the trash chute. 

Pushing through the pounding headache pulsing from your neck, you stood to your feet to study your surroundings. Did you still have to watch out for Monokuma and the Mastermind, or had they presumed you to be dead? Had they all presumed you to be dead? Naturally your thoughts returned to Makoto- had _he_ assumed you were dead? That thought made you feel even more nauseous than you had been from your probable concussion. There was a chance that everyone had written off trying to help you, even your boyfriend. You wanted to believe that he wouldn’t stop looking for you until he was absolutely certain you were gone, but your frayed nerves coaxed you to dwell on that feeling, _that despair_ , of being totally forgotten. 

Salty tears slipped onto your lips, the sudden taste snapping you back to reality a bit. You hadn’t even realized you were crying at first. What was the point of crying now? That wasn’t going to accomplish anything other than intensifying your dehydration. The only productive thing you could do was to search for food, water or a way out. 

The large door at the front of the room was bolted shut. Of course it was. All of the food was rotten. _Of course it was_. With no way out and no food to eat, the only thing you could do was to give into the exhaustion- both mental and physical. 

So you slept. You hadn’t really slept since this killing game had started, and though this wasn’t any less tense of a situation, it was the first time in a while where there wasn’t anything to do. There was no investigating to do or people to watch out for. Down here, the only thing you could do was feed that need to sleep. 

A loud thud shook the ground and startled you awake, your eyes immediately scanning the area cautiously. Nothing looked different at first, but you were certain that something heavy had just fallen down. Then you noticed that all too familiar green jacket peeking out of what must have been a new pile of trash bags. 

“M- Makoto?!" 

He groaned for a second, trying to recover from the rough landing, before his green eyes flickered open. They met with yours, and somehow, even in this twisted situation, his gaze still made your heart race. 

”(Name)! You’re okay!“ The clumsy boy scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, trying not to slip on the trash he’d fallen down with. He barely wasted a second to steady himself before throwing his arms around you, pulling you into his chest as tightly as he could. 

It almost didn’t feel real, like maybe you’d hallucinated him out of desperation and hunger from the last day or so of being down here alone. You hugged him back just as tightly, as if he might slip away if you didn’t cling to him. Despite the lingering scent of trash around you, he still smelled as comforting and nice as you remembered. He still ran his fingers through your hair soothingly like he usually did. _He still felt like home_. 

He was really here, he’d come to save you. 

After a few moments of clinging to each other in silence, he lifted his fingers from your hair, a soft gasp leaving his lips. “Your head was bleeding?”

“I guess I landed wrong,” you tried to joke, though your laugh was breathy and unconvincing. Your dizziness and headache implied a concussion, but you weren’t ready to volunteer that information to him yet. In turn he pulled away to look you over completely

“You look so much better than I expected though! I kinda thought maybe you wouldn’t be…” He didn’t dare finish that thought. He’d come entirely too close to losing you too many times for him to even say it out loud anymore. “I was really worried about you." 

"I wasn’t sure you’d come after me,” you confessed softly, burying your face in his shoulder as you leaned into him again. 

“I’ll… always come after you.” He pressed an endearing kiss to your messy, splayed hair as a flustered blush set in on his cheeks. Even after going through all of this together and being together like you had, Makoto still got embarrassed from affection and admitting his feelings so blatantly.

“I brought you food and water.”

He didn’t need to tell you twice. You reached out to grab what he was holding immediately. Simple bread and water had never seemed so delicious. 

After waiting for you to finish eating, which admittedly didn’t take very long, he laced his long fingers with yours. “C’mon, we need to get you out of here.”

“How? That door is locked and there’s no way we can climb high enough to go back out through the trash chute..” 

He flashed you that knowing, assured grin that you loved so much. It couldn’t have been more than a few days since you’d seen him, but seeing him smile at you like that again was enough to make you want to cry and cling to him tighter than you ever had before. Had there been no rush to get out of this hole, you would’ve done just that. 

His free hand disappeared into his jacket pocket for just a second before returning into sight with a shiny silver key in its grasp. 

“Kirigiri… gave you the Monokuma key?” After her dedicated attempt to frame you in the last trial, you weren’t too hopeful that she would be helpful in rescuing you. _“Why?”_

“It’s… a long story, that she wants to tell you herself, but she’s really close to figuring everything out. She’s the one who snuck me into the trash room and down the chute,” he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly with his free hand. “She’s waiting to let us out through the trapdoor there now. On the other side of that door there should be a ladder that leads back up.”

“She’s almost found the Mastermind?”

He nodded earnestly.

“Good. I want to get out of this stupid school. I want us to get out together.”

“Me too,” he promised softly, “But right now we have to get you out of _this_ horrible place.”


End file.
